Winter sports activities, for me, are an indoor matter: an unhealthy obsession with the N.B.A. and a lifelong mystification by, and indifference to, the slippery world of the N.H.L. Evidently, there are those that suppose extra broadly and really take part—outdoor, even. Maybe, after such a protracted quarantine, these lovers—the skiers, the climbers, and the remaining—have some extent.

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This week, we’re bringing you a variety of items on snowboarding, snowboarding, and different perilous winter pastimes. In “The Wild Carnival at the Heart of Skiing’s Most Dangerous Race,” Nick Paumgarten visits a small city within the Austrian Alps identified for its terribly formidable slopes. In “Learning to Ski in a Country of Beginners,” Peter Hessler travels throughout China to see how its athletes are on the brink of compete in subsequent yr’s Winter Olympics, in Beijing. In “Dude, Where’s the Snow?,” Sheila Yasmin Marikar reviews on the snowboarder Jeremy Jones and his marketing campaign to lift consciousness concerning the risks of local weather change. In “Kílian Jornet, Sky Runner,” Stephen Kurczy follows the champion ski mountaineer as he makes an attempt to beat heights that must defy conquering. Finally, in “The Adventure of a Skier,” Italo Calvino works his magic as he describes a bunch of younger boys who set out on a winter journey in northern Italy. “Air and snow were now the same color, opaque white, but by peering intently into that whiteness, so that it almost became less dense, the boys could make out the sky-blue shadow, suspended in the midst of it, flying this way and that as if on a violin string.” Enjoy. And put on a hat.

David Remnick


The Wild Carnival at the Heart of Skiing’s Most Dangerous Race

The punishing Hahnenkamm downhill brings street-party revelry to a medieval city within the Tyrolean Alps.

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Snowy mountains, a ski trail, and a white rabbit

The Adventure of a Skier

“One by one they fell, backward or forward, and he alone was cutting through the air, bent double over his skis, until he saw her.”

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An illustration of a skier in China

Learning to Ski in a Country of Beginners

As China prepares to host the Winter Olympics, its individuals get on skis.

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Image may contain: Stencil, and Text

Dude, Where’s the Snow?

Pro-snowboarder-turned-activist Jeremy Jones makes use of Instagram to lift consciousness about local weather change.

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Kílian Jornet on Aconcagua.

Kílian Jornet, Sky Runner

Jornet is broadly thought of the world’s quickest mountain runner and one of essentially the most thrilling endurance athletes immediately.

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